Karen Allnutt (allnutt@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu)
Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:31:45 -0600
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:31:45 -0600 From: Karen Allnutt <allnutt@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> Subject: [ifets] Pre-Discussion summary "Old vs. New Technology"
Chris O'Hagan's Pre-Discussion introduction.
"The next generation, like tomorrow, never comes"
"Each time enthusiasts have announced the transformation or even the
end of the school/college/university. In fact, the impact on the bulk of
teaching
and learning has been minimal.
Is the current information and communication technology (ICT) revolution
different from earlier `revolutions'?
There has always been excellent practice, but it has
tended to remain, stubbornly, in limited pockets of expertise - often widely
acknowledged, but still pockets nonetheless.
My question is, will we ever make ICT work for us ubiquitously in education
- not
just for interpersonal communication and data transfer, but in core
teaching and
learning - if we fail to make `old' technologies work ubiquitously first?"
Arshad Ahmad's (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada's) position.
"There is ample evidence to suggest that human nature resists change.... To
ask the question as to how we can
better use "old technology" before testing "new technology" is a noble but
futile attempt to resolve what we have not been able to resolve....the
implicit assumption that
what we have been doing - old technology, can be significantly improved in
isolation - away from the forces of economic and cultural change in which
we find ourselves in."
Chris O'Hagan's response to several comments, unfortunately I did not
receive all of the messages he is responding to due to the server problems
mentioned.
"...the original
question does not conceive of it as a *competition*, but rather as a
question of expectation over deliverables (hype) and what is needed
to make ubiquitous use of educational technologies....Within all
these perspectives there are technological optimists and pessimists.....
let us remember that scholars have
always poo-pooed the development of mass education. Can we go on demanding
an ever increasing share
of resources to support mass higher education in universities and
colleges without any attempt to make what we offer more efficient? "
Ken Kahn's comments.
"The question of whether we should master old technology before proceeding
with new strikes me as odd......
Sometimes new technology does what the old technology did only better.
...it strikes me as a bad idea to resist
because we haven't finished figuring out the best ways to use what we had
before."
End of Pre-Discussion summary
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